From Adolescence to Later Adulthood: Femininity, Masculinity, and Androgyny in Six Age Groups

Abstract

We drew from developmental theory regarding the timing of historical events in individuals' lives to examine age-related differences in self-reported masculine, feminine, and androgynous personality traits in a cross-sectional sample of American men (N=357) and women (N=404) representing six age groups (adolescents [12-17 years], younger [18-29 years], middle-aged [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59], young-old [60-69], old-old [70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79], and oldest-old [80 and older] adults). Oldest-old women were less likely than younger and middle-aged women to endorse masculine and androgynous traits. Men in their 70s (old-old) were more likely than adolescents and younger men to endorse androgynous traits. Discussion of the results emphasizes the implications of the second wave of the women's movement for understanding life-span gender development.

Gender Identity of Students and Teachers: Implications for a Sustainable Future

“…Besides, it has been found that gender identity can change in response to immediate contextual demands (Leszczynski & Strough, 2007;Pickard & Strough, 2003), we could suggest that scaterring towards masculinity or feminity in different social situations could change in line with the demands from environment. Possibly, in the highly competitive and demanding environment encountered during the studies at university, some students could choose the active coping style striving towards a more aggressive, dominating and independent behavior, since after leaving their family and school behind, they are entering new life, usually left on their own to survive in this new academic and social milieu (see Brougham, Zail, Mendoza, & Miller, 2009).…”

“…For women, the age pattern is not so clear, however, more recent study implicates that women also become more androgynous with age (Kasen, Chen, Sneed, Crawford, & Cohen, 2006). Small effect sizes when androgyny of men and women at similar age are compared suggest that men and women are more similar than they are different (Hyde, 2005;Strough, Leszczynski, Neely, Flinn, & Margrett, 2007) and, therefore, their engagement with environmentalism and sustainability further would be based on larger similarity and overlapping of traits than it was theoretized before. Strough with colleagues (2007) encourage the exploration of gender identity in various age periods to see the impact of historical events on the interpretation of obtained results.…”

Gender role orientation is associated with health-related quality of life differently among African-American, Hispanic, and White youth

“…Substance use and injury risk behaviors are associated with masculine gender roles among youth from early childhood to late adolescence, regardless of gender [14,15,20]. In contrast, masculinity (without gender role conflict) was associated with fewer health risk behaviors among college students in other studies [27,42].…”

“…Scores were reversed such that higher scores indicated greater male and female GRO. In addition, androgyny was measured with the recommended formula [7,42]: (masculinity score ? femininity score) -(masculinity score -femininity score).…”

“…Gender differences emerge in adolescence for various aspects of health including depression and anxiety, and the engagement of risky behaviors [10,46]. Defined as one's orientation with gender-typed personality traits and characteristics, including masculine, feminine, or androgynous dimensions [2,7,42], gender roles become increasingly important in early adolescence. According to the gender intensification hypothesis, behavioral, attitudinal, and psychological differences between adolescent boys and girls increase and solidify with age, as a result of increased pressures to conform to traditional gender roles [17,23].…”